Elijah forwards his hand in a gesture of handshake as he has done with every new student when he first meets them, Elena takes his hand but even after the handshake she keeps holding his hand and keeps staring him while all the while smiling foolishly.
"Elena" he says
"Yes" Elena answers while staring at him.
"Elena, the time for a handshake is over."
Elena comes back to her senses and realizes what she has been doing; "Oh" she says and instantly takes her hand back. She looks away, on the ground, and then on the bookshelf on her left, "You really have a very good library over here." She comments trying to make decent conversation because thoughts in her head on seeing him were totally not decent.
"Elena" he stretches out the E in her name, her name sounds different on his lips, better, she thinks, she doesn't think anyone else could call her name like this. "Walk with me" his voice brings her out of her thoughts
"Oh, sure" she says.
She follows him to the exit, he walks with her in the hallway, to the playground which is now empty, the walk in the rugby ground, Elijah's hands inside of his pockets and his focus back on the task, although his emotions a few minutes ago were so overwhelming he was just about speed away with her, throw in a dungeon and take her out only during the sacrifice but, he wouldn't, as for Katerina, he had tried to protect her but failed and as for this one, this was a new one, he doesn't know how to deal with her, in fact, he doesn't know her at all.
The walk till the playground was silent, the reason he calls every new student to meet him is that he sets compulsion on them to not to bully other students and not to rag the new students. The new student would turn into an old one when another joins so he finds it fitting to compel the students the day they join the school. And in case a witch or a werewolf joins, as they cannot be compelled by him, he chooses to expel them in case these two rules are broken.
Witches can be cunning and in order to control them, he had a witch of his own as the principal of the school and a werewolf in the name of warden. Elijah doesn't realize that he has stopped walking and Elena is standing next to him just staring at him. She was taking in all the facial features she could, it was like love in first sight for her. She knew she was with Stefan and it was too quick to move on but just one look at him made her want him. She was looking at him lovingly.
Elijah looks at the vervain hanging in her neck, that could mean she knows about the vampires but the thing is in order to compel her for the same he would have to ask her to take that out, what cunning way to make her do that he thinks and then tells her.
"Elena, we don't allow students to wear jewelry during school hours."
"Oh" Elena says, "She takes out the necklace and places it in her pocket."
'Damn' he thinks, 'Now it's in her jeans pocket, still in touch with her, maybe another day' he thinks and also thinks, 'Maybe she doesn't even need the compulsion given the fact she might not survive the breaking of the moonstone curse. Depending on her behavior, I will decide whether to hand her the elixir or not.'
"So?" She questions, bringing him out of his thoughts, "Why am I here?"
Elijah in his head, 'So that I could compel you like the other students to behave but wait, you have vervain, how can I do that now.' At times like this he wishes to be the original vampire everybody fears but he cannot let this opportunity lose, he asks her, "Actually, can you show me what it was you were wearing."
"It's a gift" she takes out the necklace and holds it loosely by the strings.
Carefully, not holding the pendant, only touching the strings he takes it from her, pretending to see it, now that her weapon is in his hands, he makes eye contact with her, compels her,
"You're not going to remember that we discussed this, now tell me why do you have vervain?"
"I dated a vampire, he gave me this protect me from his brother."
"Why would he want to protect you from his own brother?" the question seemed ironic especially when he had been protecting Katherine from Klaus for half a millennia.
"Damon was a womanizer, he compelled my best friend to sleep with him repeatedly without her consent, Stefan wanted to save me from the same fate."
"You denied coming to this school earlier, now why did you agree now?"
"Earlier, I didn't want to leave my family, my hometown, my old school, but when I found out what was happening to my best friend, I and my two best friends plotted revenge, we tortured and killed Damon while Stefan was out of town. After I betrayed Stefan, Mystic Falls started to haunt me. Stefan loved me with all his heart and plotting to kill his brother was killing me from inside, I didn't want to stay in the place that reminded me of Stefan because all those places reminded me how I have wronged, how I have taken the one thing from him that matters the most to him."
Elijah was shocked for a moment, over the course of his life he has heard vampires compelling humans as their blood bags, sex toys, slaves or whatever they want them to be, but it is the first time he has heard of teenage girls torturing a vampire to his death. Genuinely, he was intrigued, he asked her the details and she gave that to him. Elena wasn't there to see the torture but Bonnie and Caroline elaborated the details very vividly which she shared to him.
"So, Elena, tell me, if one of your friends were to turn into vampires would you have done the same? Do you hate vampires so much?"
"No. I fell in love with one, I don't hate vampires, I only wanted Care to be free of what had happened to her."
"I see you care for your friends a lot." Elijah is speculating whether to take his knowledge of the supernatural away or tell her even more. Vampires, as he know, were vindictive, and the one, Stefan Salvatore, that she dated, he knows him to be the ripper of Monterrey, if he leaves her with the knowledge that she posses then maybe her vampire boyfriend will find out and kill her before the sacrifice, also depriving her of all the knowledge about the supernatural would be just as good as letting her walk to a battlefield without any armor.
He settles for taking her memories away of the role she played in Damon's death, not because he wants things to be okay between her and Stefan but because he wants to keep her safe until he finds the moonstone and punishes his brother for killing his entire family. If Stefan doesn't know, then he won't be a threat to Elena, that's what his reasoning is. And so he does it, he compels her.
When Elena comes back to her senses she is standing alone in the ground, the necklace hanging loose from her hands. She wears it, obviously (he compelled her to wear it) and heads towards the dormitory.
Its night time in Mystic Falls, people have turned off the lights, all are retiring to their beds, someone knocks on the door of Forbes house. The Sheriff opens the door, it's a new face, she hasn't seen around, "Yes, what is it?" she questions.
"I would like to meet your daughter"
"I am sorry who are you? And at this time of the night why would I even let you meet my daughter."
"Oh I am sorry for not introducing to you first. Hi my name Elijah, the director and trustee of the school of gifted children, a new girl joined my school, she was taken in for her writing talents, and she told me your daughter possesses a unique talents to sing…"
Caroline had been awake and been listening to this conversation from the inside when she hears this much she marches out telling him, "Oh so first she leaves without informing any of us and now she wants me there too, tell me does your school not have a thing for time, who shows up at this hour for an audition, well, my answer is no, I won't audition for your school and I sure as hell, won't leave Mystic Falls."
"Care" Liz says trying to calm her daughter down, Elena left suddenly and this affected her and it affected Bonnie, they were both hurt, not only did Elena not tell them that she was leaving but her leaving at all was what hurt more because her telling it to them would have made no difference.
But, her daughter did make a point, this was an odd time for anyone to show up, especially for school auditions, she turns to the man standing at her door and asks for his id. Elijah chuckles, he had already compelled Elena to get the knowledge that he needed, he knew the Sheriff consumed vervain and her daughter wore it.
He knew what he would be up against so he came here prepared, Elijah shows the Sheriff his id and then tells her, "See, I know this is an odd time, but I have a habit of interviewing the new students the day they come, Elena enrolled late and I was in Virginia, I interviewed her on the video call and when I asked her if she could bring any more talents to my school, she named your daughter, I was already in town, but by next morning I have to leave, so I decided why not see her talent here."
"You can go back to where you came from, I am not interested in going to the school that ripped my best friend away from me."
"Caroline" Liz reprimands her daughter, "Watch your tone." Elijah still looks at the sheriff eagerly, the Sheriff opens the door further making space for him to walk in and then says, "Come in."
Elijah walks in and the gears in Caroline's head run thinking he is a vampire because he didn't enter here without the invite, but then she shrugs it off when she sees the vervain twig showing in his pocket. Elijah signs someone and they come in with a bag, "I want you to perform a song wearing this."
"I am going upstairs" the sheriff says when she notices Caroline shying to sing in front of her. Elijah wasn't here to get Caroline, because the three of them leaving right after the elder Salvatore's murder would lead to suspicion, he moves to fetch the water glass kept behind her and when he returns to get to his seat, he has already loosened the clasp of her necklace. When Caroline is singing, her vervain necklace drops down without her noticing, Elijah uses this opportunity to compel her to forget Elena's role in the murder of Damon Salvatore and that of her own.
Elijah leaves telling her that he will see her performance another time, some urgency has arisen. He leaves and Caroline watches with parted lips, "What the fuck, I performed for nothing, no yes, no, no. Although I mentioned I am not leaving my town doesn't give him the right to leave in the middle of my performance. That's so rude Ehh."
The next stop Elijah makes is at Sheila Bennett's house the next morning. He knew that he couldn't compel witches so he had his own witches make a potion that would make these witches forget Elena's and their role in Damon's murder. Even though they did what was right, saving the doppelganger is on top of his list. He pours the potion in a bottle and compels a human to deliver it to her as a free sample of pain relieving potion, Sheila was old, all old people have body aches, that worked, because Sheila took the potion and consumed the small vial of it and instantly forgot why she drunk it. Same in the Grill, compels a waiter to make Bonnie try the new drink they want to launch, that's it, the doppelganger is safe. He thinks.
After he is sure, the doppelganger is safe and that she and her friends possess no threat from the younger and better Salvatore, he leaves.
Stefan was in that abandoned cabin, where his brother had been tortured and killed. He was there to look for proof, to look for a clue that would lead to the killer of his brother. He has seen the bloodied chair, the blood marks behind it, the iron rod which has Damon's tissue on one end. And last but not the least, he has noticed the vervain that is carefully tucked into the water tap so that it may give vervain water. He has been observing the cabin for hours, looking for something, anything that would give him a lead. When he looks out of the widow, his eye catches a particular place on the ground, he speeds to that place and he could see the mud over here was uneven as compared to the mud around, definitely someone was buried here, he starts digging with his bare hands and what he finds, he finds a pair of rubber gloves.
He digs further and finds an axe. He takes out a kerchief and carefully places the axe on the ground, his eyes, more capable than human ones, could see the fingerprints on it and also the axe smelled of his brother's blood. Last but not the least, he finds Lee's dead body, and his heart kept over it. If Lee's heart was ripped out then definitely he didn't kill Damon. If not he, then who, he thinks.